I shouldn't be writing a blog right now. It's about 3:50am, and in about 45 minutes myself and three other Business Associates will be traveling back to Our Hometown. The drive will last around four to five hours, a fairly simple drive for anyone who hasn't been up since 10:00am and hasn't come off of two consecutive overnight shifts. So yeah, I have first drive duty, so I should be sleeping. Me being stupid, I'm not. I've dabbled in writing some of what will eventually be the fourth greatest novel ever written, listened to three songs over and over and over and over and over again, read about fourteen different recaps of a damn near meaningless May baseball game, considered drinking chocolate milk that hasn't seen a fridge in over 24 hours, and tried watching CSPAN. I'm 85% sure CSPAN exists solely to screw with the heads of insomniacs. Why else would they be airing a three week old poetry reading? WHY?!
But I digress. Even though I set out with no initial purpose for this blog, no overall message I wanted to eventually reach in a roundabout way, I do have some lessons learned from this recent business trip I'm now about to wrap up.
As you may recall, me being the most exciting man in the universe, I work in a warehouse for a very large Company. This Company is so big in fact it necessitates several warehouses strewn about the country! How rad. Anyways, a warehouse five hours away from my warehouse called up and said something like, "Dude, can you watch the kids for like, a day in a half while I go get bombed?" My warehouse was totally, "Sure dude. We'll ask for volunteers, letting them assume by volunteering to go they could take extra time off some other time, just like we've let them do in the past, and then once they've agreed and can no longer back out, tell them they have to work their full schedule after that."
Volunteer email sent out; I respond, "Hell yeah!" thinking I would be able to not work this Saturday and could help my Ladyfriend and her Family work on her house. Then about two weeks before we're set to leave, our beloved Upper Management Team, hereby abbreviated to MORONSANDDUMB, sent out communication letting us know we will not be allowed to flex schedules. So here's my week (keep in mind I'm moving in two weeks and have a Ladyfriend who needs some house help (that sounds naughty this late)): Worked last Saturday, Sunday, Monday, sleptwalk through Tuesday, traveled to a new warehouse Wednesday and worked that night, worked tonight which is clearly a Thursday if you've been following along, drive back in two hours, be bitchy and grumpy on Friday, back to work on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Bah! I'm not trying to complain about my schedule; though I am. I'm just trying to set the tone as to why myself and my fellow Business Associates were a wee bit cynical on this trip.
That, combined with the fact the warehouse we're visiting is in a really cruddy little town that pretends to be like My Town, but is not, and the fact we did not get an overnight drinking day, which we Business People love, and the fact I'm using too many commas and run on sentences because it's late, and the fact Starbucks should be open 24 hours and isn't but McDonalds is and shouldn't, and the fact that chocolate milk doesn't age well in the heat, lead me to following observations about business travel:
1) Assume your Company generates billions of dollars each year in revenue. You there? Now picture yourself traveling to a town with three hotels, none of which are the Ritz. Do you think they'd put you in the lavish Country Inn and Suites, or the Best Western that is literally on the other side of the tracks? If you guessed Best Western, you're correct! You may not have heard of this particular Best Western, because it recently changed its name from "Dead Hooker Hotel" which itself was a name change from "Where Government Officials Cheat on Their Wives." Seriously, when I woke up this morning, I half expected to be dead, or to hear my neighbor being savagely beaten by one of the many drunk migrant workers who "live" above me and who spent the whole day drinking and shouting at people who walked by. "Hey You" they said. "What" I said. "What are you doing?" they said. "What's it to you?" I said. "Tough guy huh?" They said. "The toughest." I said. Door shut, dead-bolted, lights off. I told them!
2) People from Africa evidently do not like chicken wings, but will eat them if peer pressured. One of my business associates is a very nice man from Africa who evidently has refused to eat chicken wings since joining my Company about a year and a half ago. For some reason, he broke his vow and ate chicken wings on Wednesday night when we arrived in town. Not only did he eat wings, he ate very hot wings. Very very hot wings. Suffice it to say, he spent the rest of the trip talking about his chapped crack and how he no longer wants to wipe. Normally I don't find poo jokes humorous, but there was something about his African accident complaining about "da chicken" and "da many shits of paper dat chapped my crack" that made me giggle then as it does now and as it will forever.
3) Do you ever have the same egocentric thoughts I do? That everyone is merely a bit player in the "ME ME ME" story, and if you were to move or go elsewhere, everyone you know would just get a different part in the movie? Of course you do. Anyways, I learned people who worked in warehouses in one town look creepily like people who work in warehouses in other buildings. I'm 85% sure the team I supervise all has estranged twin siblings, or my Company was playing one weird ass joke on me. One guy who I kept calling by his twin in My Hometown's name, even wore the same shirt as what my guy wears sometime. It was creepy and spooky, and maybe I'm dead and in hell and that's why I'm staying at the "Please Get your Room Key through bulletproof plastic and be brief with the Night Manager--he is busy" hotel.
4) There is no lonelier experience than driving to Wally World at 2:30 in the morning, somewhere in the Midwest, to buy your African friend some Pepto Bismol, only to hear Johnny Cash's soul-wrenching version of Hurt play over the loud speaker. Combine this with the dingy floors, dark lighting, and the cashier telling me how she had to start at Wal-Mart because she can't afford cigarettes working at the gas station, it may have been the loneliest image I'd ever been privy to.
5) Lastly, I learned one should never blog on no sleep when the real world starts to fade away and the insanity of dreamworld takes hold. It causes bad cases of the rambles, an aversion to proofreading, and a desire to finish the chocolate milk that damn near made me throw up about ten minutes ago.
And with that, I must pack my bags and drive.
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